Apple’s not pleased with Toyota advertising on ModMyi, and I’m not pleased with Apple

Toyota’s advertising jaunt on Cydia didn’t even last a full day. Apple has officially asked Toyota to remove the Scion-branded theme from ModMyi. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where Apple would fall on the map on this one. Less than 24-hours after we initially reported that the theme was available, Toyota’s taken steps to have the theme removed.

We’re sure there weren’t any tears shed over the theme disappearing, but it’s more principle at this point anyway, isn’t it?

Where’s it begin, and where’s it end?

Where does ownership of your product begin, and where does the reach of a corporation end? It seems like we’re entering an age where a company not only has the right to determine how their products are used after purchase, but also who’s filtering money into homebrew projects.

That’s really what this comes down to at this point. Apple doesn’t like the jailbreak community, despite it recently being deemed legal. So, not only are they doing what they can to make sure the jailbreak community fails, they’re also doing everything they can to make sure that money isn’t being filtered into the project in any way.

Clout—Apple might have it, but at some point we need to stop and ask ourselves how we feel about that kind of control in our lives. It makes sense that Apple’s tired of having to deal with broken phones because someone managed to break it while jailbreaking, but that shouldn’t mean that we should lose the right to do what we want with our phones either.

If Toyota wants to spend money reaching out to a community they should have that right. I’m not sure why this bugs me so much; it just feels like a line was crossed today. It’s really hard to not draw the conclusion that Apple’s upset because Toyota didn’t filter their advertising dollars through the iAds program.

There’s a dangerous precedent being set here, and we need to ask ourselves if we mind our iPhones being that tightly controlled. Would we feel the same way if this was happening with our TVs or Playstations? In the latter case, Sony has gone to pretty extreme lengths to close up their own personal “jailbreak” community. Sony’s filed lawsuit after lawsuit trying to tie-off the homebrew community that has sprung up over the last year. It hasn’t gotten nearly the same press as Apple’s anti-jailbreak moves, but these cases remain linked. It’s pretty clear how consumer electronics companies think when it comes to homebrew jailbreaking—consumers have no right to go meddling inside of the devices they buy.

As you can see, this isn’t just Apple. It’s a problem that exists across the entire consumer electronics industry.

So we ask you, how do you feel about that? Do you think a company has the right to determine what you do with your products in your home? Heck, do you prefer it? We’d love to know in the comments.

Article Via The Apple Blog

Joshua is the Content Marketing Manager at BuySellAds. He’s also the founder of Macgasm.net. And since all that doesn’t quite give him enough content to wrangle, he’s also a technology journalist in his spare time, with bylines at PCWorld, Macworld and TechHive.